Benign hallucinations are usually non-threatening hallucinations in patients with Parkinson´s disease associated psychosis, in which the patient has a well-preserved sensorium and is aware of the hallucinations.
Minor hallucinations are: 1. a sense of presence hallucinations, which are characterized as a vivid feeling that somebody or an animal is closely present when in reality it is not. 2. Passage hallucinations are described as a person or a animal quickly passing in the peripheral visual field.
These terms are more used by neurologists as by psychiatrists.
Do you use them?
Do you also use them outside the context of Parkinson's disease?
Never heard or used these and wonder if there are any sources for these definitions. In the psychiatric literature, terms like "unusual subjective experiences" are sometimes used to describe subjective experiences which do not fulfill the criteria of psychopathological symptoms like hallucinations, but appear to be close to them (like if a person is not sure if he/she has really seen an object which was not present, or is not really sure if he/she has truly heard a voice while nobody else was present, but cannot exclude this either). There is quite some literature about this topic, which you may be able to retrieve by using "unusual subjective experiences" as a search term in Medline. However, I am not aware of such studies in persons with "organic" psychoses. As for "official" definitions of psychopathological terms, the glossary of DSM-5 is a source. In Germany, there is a small handbook about psychiatric documentation, which is frequently used as a source of definitions, for example when psychiatrists prepare for board examinations. It is, however, only available in German.
The problem of these terms is that neurologists use them quite commonly, although psychiatric psychopathology has long known them under other names. Yes, for example as pseudohallucination (in the case of so-called benign hallucinations).
In my view, it would be more than desirable to unify the terminology between psychiatrists and neurologists, not to create new concepts.
In Germany, neurologists have to spend one year of their specialty training in psychiatry. Besides specialty issues, questions of national or regional traditions in terminology may also arise.
"In my view, it would be more than desirable to unify the terminology between psychiatrists and neurologists, not to create new concepts."
Don't forget the otologists! In many dictionaries you will find the same definition for tinnitus as for auditory hallucinations.
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